Geneticist George Church Says He Can Create A Neanderthal Child

A US scientist is looking for an "adventurous female" who he claims can give birth to the Neanderthals — close human relatives who went extinct about 33,000 years ago. The Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics, George Church's wild ambitions include genetically engineering humans so they can live up to the ripe age of 120 or even 150, make them immune to viruses and cancer resistant, in addition to recreating Neanderthals. Neanderthals may be thought as primitive cave dwellers, but new research has shown they were more like humans than previously thought, and may even have interbred with Homo sapiens. Church told the German newspaper Der Spiegel that he's gathered the DNA of Neanderthals, will work some laboratory magic on it, and could then be ready to recreate one —provided he can find an "adventurous" human surrogate mother, News.com.au reported. According to the paper's "slightly stilted translation" of the German article, Church believes it is technically possible to "rebirth" a Neanderthal and has "already managed to attract enough DNA from fossil bones for them to reconstruct the DNA of the human species largely extinct". He wants to genetically engineer human cells to become Neanderthal then create a clone using an "adventurous female human". Church says there would be political implications to creating "a kind of Neanderthal culture". There's a long history to scientists wanting to resurrect extinct creatures. There have been stories in the past about the possibilities of genetically engineering the Tasmanian Tiger or the Woolly Mammoth. It's theoretically possible, but according to one of Australia's top genetic experts, highly unlikely to happen any time soon, the report said. Professor Ryszard Maleszka from The Australian National University's Research School of Biology said these sort of "over the top" claims were often made "for publicity". "To put it mildly, I'm really sceptical about this idea of creating ancient organisms from pieces of DNA found in bones and elsewhere, " he said. (timesofindia)